2005
2004 2005 2006 Events * Film The Constant Gardener is released. * Film American Gun is released. * Charles Tilly publishes Trust and Rule. * Michael Onfray publishes Atheist Manifesto. * Earth Explorer CryoSat I crashes into the Arctic Sea in a failed launch. * Arson attacks by rightwing extremists on abortion providers occur in Washington state (January) and Florida (July). * U.S. Supreme Court decides that capital punishment is no longer constitutional for juvenile offenders in Roper v. Simmons 125 S.Ct. 1183. * Year on Increasing 2005 Peace Protests in Washington, DC Timeline January * January 1: Ordinance banning indoor nudity takes effect in Mexican city of Villahermosa in Tabasco state. * January 4: Leak at Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant prompts Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to shut down the reactor. * January 4: Iragi Baghdad provicne governor Ali al-Haidari is assassinated. * January 8, 15, 22, 29: Nez Perce Wolf Education Program in Spalding, Idaho. * January 9: Mahmoud Abbas elected to succeed Yasser Arafat as Palestinian Authority President. * January 16: Zhao Ziyang, Chinese leader who fell from power after the Tiananmen Square Massacre, dies. * January 17: Rwot Acana II of Payira is crowned Paramount Chief of the Acholi. * January 20: Quagga-like foal is born. * January 28: Taxi suicide bomber detonates near NATO peacekeeping vehicle in Kabul Afghanistan, killing a British soldier. * January 29: Report is released stating that two computer disks that supposedly went missing and subsequently caused closure of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in Summer 2004 never existed in the first place. * January 30th: Legislative elections are held in Iraq. February * February: U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is 48%. * February 2: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announces that he will ask the Egyptian Parliament to amend the constitution to permit direct election of the president in mutlti-candidate elections. * February 4: Judas is kissed by Pilate: U.S. President George W. Bush leaves the rostrum of the United States House of Representatives after delivering his annual State of the Union address and plants a big kiss on Sen. Joe Lieberman on television. Responding to a question by Don Imus, Republican Senator John McCain denied having obseved the kiss. * February 12: Darwin Day * February 14: Rafic Hariri is killed in a massive bombing in Beirut. * February 15L UTube launched. * February 16: Kyoto Protocol formally goes into effect. The United States and Australia are not treaty members. * February 24: Canada officially announces it will not join the U.S. in operating a continental missile defense program. March * March 1: Self-declared Republic of Somaliland (northwestern Somalia) announces ban on all types of plastic bags as environmental measure. * March 4: Al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's No. 2., condemns Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a videotape broadcast. Sunni Islamists can't be bothered with prosaic issues like hunger and the rights of women and children. They must worry about the content of cartoons in languages they cannot read. * March 6: Nuclear physicist Hans Bethe dies at age 98. * March 8: Aslan Maskhadov dies. * March 21: Red Lake High School Massacre takes the lives of ten people. The shooter was 17 year old "Goth kid" Jeff Weise. * March 31: Terri Schiavo's body dies. * March 31: U.N. Security Council votes to adopt Resolution 1593 referring the situation in Darfur, Sudan to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo. * March 31: Pakistan testfires short-range nuclear capable surface-to-surface Hatf-II missile that can reach targets 180 kilometers away. April * April: U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is 44%. * April 2: Pope John Paul II dies. * April 9-10: last Syrian troops are withdrawn from Lebanon. * April 15: Chinese nationalist anti-Japanese protests in Shanghai. * April 16: Japan demands apology from China for anti-Japanese protests. * April 17: China rejects Japanese demand for apology. * April 21: Japanse Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologizes for Japanese miltiarism in WWII. * April 25: Republican U.S. President George W. Bush is photographed walking hand-in-hand with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah on the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas. * April 26: Last Syrian troops leave Lebanon. * April 26: Runaway bride Jennifer Carol Wilbanks runs away from home. * April 29: Runaway bride Jennifer Carol Wilbanks telephones from Albuquerque, New Mexico; lies that she had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a Hispanic male and a white woman. May * May 8: Burmese U.N. employee and one Afghani killed in an attack on an Internet cafe in Kabul, Afghanistan. * May 10: Egyptian Parliament approves Article 76 amending the constitution to allow direct election of the president in multi-candidate elections. * May 15: During a speech to the assembled diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice lies when she states that, "this war came to us, not the other way around." Is she capable of shame? * May 23: Chinese Vice-Premier Wu Yi cuts short visit to Japan before planned meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to express unhappiness over official Japanese attitudes about the Yasakuni Shrine, etc. * May 29: In a blow to further integration of the European Union, voters in France defeat a referendum on a proposed European Constitution. Three days later, voters in The Netherlands do the same. * May 29: Iragi Anbar provincial governor Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalaw's body is found, three weeks after his abduction. * May 30: In an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live", Vice President Dick Cheney states that the insurgency in Iraq is, "in its last throes, and that it "will clearly decline" over time. Source: Donna Miles. "Cheney: Iraqi Insurgent Activity 'Will Clearly Decline'." American Forces Press Service. May 31, 2005. * May 31: W. Mark Felt is confirmed to be the Watergate Scandal source called Deep Throat. June * June: U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is 45%. * June 1: Suicide bomber kills 20 in a mosque in Kandahar, Afghanistan. * June 13: Demonstration for women's rights in Tehran draws 250 brave souls. * June 13: University of Nebraska files H-1B application for Bolivian academic Waskar Ali to teach as an assistant professor in the departments of history and ethnic studies. * June 18: Speaking in London, former U.S. President Big Bill Clinton criticzed the second Bush administration's Guantanamo decision by saying that it was opposed to the "fundamental nature" of American society and that the base shoud be, "closed down or cleaned up." * June 21: President George W. Bush unintentionally explains why the U.S. is losing the war in Iraq: "While its tough, more and more Iraqis are becoming battle-hardened and trained to defend themselves. And that's exactly the strategy that's going to work..." * June 21: German Army Major Florian Pfaff is exonorated by the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (administrative court) after refusing to take part in the development of software likely to be used in the Iraq War. July * July: Pew Center opinion poll revelas that 51% of Pakistanis express confidence that Osama bin Laden will "do the right thing in world affairs." * July 7: 56 people are killed as a series of four London bombings|bombings] strike the London public transport system. * July 11: Somali peace activist Abdulkadir Yahya Ali is assassinated in an early morning attack on his home in Mogadishu. Yahya was co-founder & director of the Centre for Research and Dialogue. * July 17: Isreali PM Ariel Sharon instructs the Isreali Defense Forces to use force "without limitation" to quell Palestinian resistance in Gaza. * July 20: Ken Livingstone states in a BBC interview, "I think you've just had 80 years of western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of the western need for oil." * July 21: Terrorist attack with 4 attempted bomb attacks on 3 London underground and a London bus. Bombs fail to explode properly, and only 1 injury is reported. * July 22: Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, shot dead at a London underground station by police who mistake him for a suicide bomber. * July 26: Assassin Mohammed Bouyeri is sentenced to life in prison. August * August: U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is 40%. * August 11-12: Fukushima Number One and Five Reactors in Ohkuma, Fukushima Prefecture, are shut down for unscheduled maintenance. * August 14: New Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or محمود احمدی‌نژاد presented the Iranian Parliament or Majles with a prospective cabinet of virtual political unknowns, included among them the terrifying Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi. * August 17: Joint Russian-Chinese war games. * August 18: Government of Guatemala formally apologizes for the massacre of 226 people in the village of Plan de Sanchez on July 18, 1982 by the Guatemalan Army. * August 25: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or محمود احمدی‌نژاد is elected President of Iran in a second round. * August 25: Canada sends three frigates--the HMCS Shawinigan, the HMCS Glace Bay and the HMCS Fredericton--to Churchill island to reassert its claim to sovereignty vis-a-vis Denmark. Someone is thinking long term about the possible effects of Global Warming. * August 26: Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers warns that U.S. forces leaving Iraq before it is stable would produce "instant instability." * August 29: Hurricane Katrina slams into the Gulf Coast, devastating much of the coastal regions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Levees surrounding the city of New Orleans are breached, flooding 80% of the city. Thousands are killed, and FEMA and President Bush are sharply criticized for a delayed federal response to the disaster. * August 30: Zimbabwean Parliament passes Amendment No. 1, allowing for the expropriation of farmland without compensation and without legal recourse for "whatever purpose." September * September 5: David Safavian is arrested. * September 11: Pentagon releases draft of a revised Nuclear Doctrine entitled "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" written under direction of Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers that envisions preemptive use of ABC weapons. The draft is withdrawn in 2006. Controversial Draft Withdrawn * September 19: Jason Christy named executive director of the Christian Coalition. * September 24: Anti-Iraq War protest demonstrations in the U.S. and Europe: 150,000 in Washington, D.C., 15,000 in Los Angeles, 10,000 in London, 20,000 in San Francisco, and more than 2,000 in San Diego. * September 28: Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is indicted on criminal conspiracy charges following an investigation by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle into his and his associates' effort to violate election finance laws. Five days later, DeLay is indicted on two additional counts, money laundering and an new count of criminal conspiracy. * September 28: Motorbike suicide bomber kills 9 Afghan soldiers outside an army training center in Kabul, Afghanistan. * September 30: U.S. Pres. George W. Bush replaces Leon Kass as Chair of the President's Council on Bioethics with Georgetown University bioethicist Edmund Pellegrino, a conservative Roman Catholic. October * October: Indonesian Islamists of Jemaah Islamiyah Poso together with members of KOMPAK behead three schoolgirls. * October 5: British Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith charged with refusing to serve in the Iraq War. * October 6: Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro visits Yasukuni Shrine. * October 10: Two suicide bombings in Kandahar Afghanistan kill three. * October 24: The 1998 Americans killed in combat in Iraq since 2003 exceed the number killed in the first four years of the War in Vietnam from 1961-1965. * October 26: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad states that Israel should be wiped off the map at a Teheran conference called "A World Without Zionism." This is condemned in a UN Security Council Resilution and in U,S, Senate and House resolutions (H.res. 523 and S. 292). * October 31: Authorities in the Iranian city of Bojnourd launched a morality drive by confiscating 65 titillating manequins, saying that the move was part of a larger campaign against vandalism and biker gangs. November * November: U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is 34%. * November: Sergei Ivanov appointed Russian Federation Deputy Prime Minister, second in line to the Russian Presidency after Dmitry Medvedev. * November 7: Burmese military junta information minister Brig. General Kyaw Hsan confirms that the government of the country is moving the capital to Pyinmana, some 600 kilometers north of the capital of Yangon/Rangoon. * November 8th: Election day (US municipal & state). * November 14: Twin suicide car bombings in Kabul, Afghanistan kill 1 German peacekeeper and 8 Afghanis. * November 19: Killings of 15 civilians in Haditha, Iraq may be either friendly fire or a war crime. The Living Nightmare That George W. Bush Created * November 21: VP Richard B. "Dick" Cheney asserts that the claim that prewar intelligence was "distorted, hyped, or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false." December * December: Iranian Baha'i Habihullah Mahrami dies kysteriously in custody. * December 5: Indonesian Islamists bomb a market in Palu in Indonesia. * December 9: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad questioned the historical truth of accounts of the Holocaust while he is in Mecca, being very pious. * December 16: Car bombing damages Norwegain peace keeping vehicle in Afghanistan. * December 17: Hong Kong police clash woth anti-WTO protestors. * December 22: Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Muhammad Medhi Aref claimed that the Holocaust was a Zionist "myth". * December 22: Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso stated that the Chinese military build-up was becoming a "considerable threat." Does the Japanese government regret supporting the Republican War in Iraq now that U.S. military forces are tied down in that quagmire? * December 29: Pres. G.W. Bush quietly and creepily changes the emergency line of succession at the Pentagon by Executive Order. The three miltiary service chiefs drop from the 3rd, 4th and 5th places to 6th, 7th and 8th places while three civilian under-secretaries of defense (all positions now filled by Rumsfeld and Cheney's neo-conservative loyalists) move up and take their places in the line. * December 29: Italian investigators launch yet another corruption investigation of Italian Prime Minister, media mogul and third richest man in Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, this time in regards to $600,000 that may have been paid to British lawyer David Mills to lie on Berlusconi's behalf. Mills is the husband of British Minister for Culture, Media and Sport Tessa Jowell. Category:Year